Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 117 of 299 · 20 per page

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The evening had started a few hours before, at a restaurant where I had promised to meet a group of students to say goodbye. They were already there when I arrived, ten or twelve of them seated at tables they had pushed together. When they saw me several of them stood up, their chairs scraping on the uneven patio, and they called out my name, or not my name really but my family name, I mean my father’s name; soon I wouldn’t be that name anymore, I thought, feeling suddenly the relief of it. Of course it was what they called me, though they weren’t students anymore, or not my students; they had graduated a year earlier and were back in Sofia after their first year abroad, in America or England or Amsterdam, they had scattered as all my students here scatter, none of them had stayed behind. There was already wine on the table, three bottles opened to breathe, a cheap Bulgarian white for the late June evening, even as I took my seat I could taste the twinge of it. But it was a pleasure to hold it up to the light, and more than a pleasure to hear them say my name again, my father’s name, and then Z. said To new beginnings, and we drank. It was terrible wine but it didn’t matter, I was as happy in that moment as I had ever been. There were more toasts over dinner, as the waiters carried out dishes that my students had missed while they were away, salads and grilled meats and ceramic pots of vegetables and cheese. They toasted one another, their year away, their stories of London and New York.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  We had eggs sautéed in diced tomatoes and fish sauce over rice for dinner. I was wearing a grey-red plaid button-up from L.L.Bean. You were in the kitchen, washing up, humming. The TV was on, playing a rerun of Rugrats, Lan clapping to the animated show. One of the bulbs in the bathroom buzzed, the wattage too strong for the socket. You wanted to go buy new ones at the drugstore but decided to wait for your wages from the salon so we could also get a box of Ensure for Lan. You were okay that day. You even smiled twice through the cigarette smoke. I remember it. I remember it all because how can you forget anything about the day you first found yourself beautiful? I turned the shower off and, instead of toweling and dressing before the steam on the door mirror cleared, like I normally would, I waited. It was an accident, my beauty revealed to me. I was daydreaming, thinking about the day before, of Trevor and me behind the Chevy, and had stood in the tub with the water off for too long. By the time I stepped out, the boy before the mirror stunned me. Who was he? I touched the face, its sallow cheeks. I felt my neck, the braid of muscles sloped to collarbones that jutted into stark ridges. The scraped-out ribs sunken as the skin tried to fill its irregular gaps, the sad little heart rippling underneath like a trapped fish. The eyes that wouldn’t match, one too open, the other dazed, slightly lidded, cautious of whatever light was given it. It was everything I hid from, everything that made me want to be a sun, the only thing I knew that had no shadow. And yet, I stayed. I let the mirror hold those flaws—because for once, drying, they were not wrong to me but something that was wanted, that was sought and found among a landscape as enormous as the one I had been lost in all this time. Because the thing about beauty is that it’s only beautiful outside of itself. Seen through a mirror, I viewed my body as another, a boy a few feet away, his expression unmoved, daring the skin to remain as it was, as if the sun, setting, was not already elsewhere, was not in Ohio. I got what I wanted—a boy swimming toward me. Except I was no shore, Ma. I was driftwood trying to remember what I had broken from to get here. —

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Because being knocked down was already understood, already a given, it was the skin you wore. To ask What’s good? was to move, right away, to joy. It was pushing aside what was inevitable to reach the exceptional. Not great or well or wonderful, but simply good. Because good was more often enough, was a precious spark we sought and harvested of and for one another. Here, good is finding a dollar caught in the sewer drain, is when your mom has enough money on your birthday to rent a movie, plus buy a five-dollar pizza from Easy Frank’s and stick eight candles over the melted cheese and pepperoni. Good is knowing there was a shooting and your brother was the one that came home, or was already beside you, tucked into a bowl of mac and cheese. That’s what Trevor said to me that night as we climbed out of the river, the black droplets dripping from our hair and fingertips. His arm slung across my shivering shoulder, he put his mouth to my ear and said, “You good. You heard, Little Dog? You good, I swear. You good.” — After we put Lan’s urn in the ground, polished her grave one last time with cloth rags soaked in wax and castor oil, you and I return to our hotel in Saigon. Soon as we enter the dingy room with its choking air conditioner, you turn off all the lights. I stop midstride, not sure what to make of the sudden dark. It’s early afternoon and the motorbikes can still be heard honking and puttering on the street below. The bed creaks, you had sat down. “Where am I?” you say. “Where is this?” Not knowing what else to say, I say your name. “Rose,” I say. The flower, the color, the shade. “Hong,” I repeat. A flower is seen only toward the end of its life, just-bloomed and already on its way to being brown paper. And maybe all names are illusions. How often do we name something after its briefest form? Rose bush, rain, butterfly, snapping turtle, firing squad, childhood, death, mother tongue, me, you. Only when I utter the word do I realize that rose is also the past tense of rise. That in calling your name I am also telling you to get up. I say it as if it is the only answer to your question—as if a name is also a sound we can be found in. Where am I? Where am I? You’re Rose, Ma. You have risen.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  You nodded, eyes sober behind your mask. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” you said in English, “don’t cry. Your Julie,” you went on, “how she die?” “Cancer,” the lady said. “And in the backyard, too! She died right there in the backyard, dammit.” You put down her hand, took off your mask. Cancer. You leaned forward. “My mom, too, she die from the cancer.” The room went quiet. Your co-workers shifted in their seats. “But what happen in backyard, why she die there?” The woman wiped her eyes. “That’s where she lives. Julie’s my horse.” You nodded, put on your mask, and got back to painting her nails. After the woman left, you flung the mask across the room. “A fucking horse?” you said in Vietnamese. “Holy shit, I was ready to go to her daughter’s grave with flowers!” For the rest of the day, while you worked on one hand or another, you would look up and shout, “It was a fucking horse!” and we’d all laugh. — The time, at thirteen, when I finally said stop. Your hand in the air, my cheek bone stinging from the first blow. “Stop, Ma. Quit it. Please.” I looked at you hard, the way I had learned, by then, to look into the eyes of my bullies. You turned away and, saying nothing, put on your brown wool coat and walked to the store. “I’m getting eggs,” you said over your shoulder, as if nothing had happened. But we both knew you’d never hit me again. Monarchs that survived the migration passed this message down to their children. The memory of family members lost from the initial winter was woven into their genes. When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind? The time I woke into an ink-blue hour, my head—no, the house—filled with soft music. My feet on cool hardwood, I walked to your room. Your bed was empty. “Ma,” I said, still as a cut flower over the music. It was Chopin, and it was coming from the closet. The door etched in reddish light, like the entrance to a place on fire. I sat outside it, listening to the overture and, underneath that, your steady breathing. I don’t know how long I was there. But at one point I went back to bed, pulled the covers to my chin until it stopped, not the song but my shaking. “Ma,” I said again, to no one, “come back. Come back out.” — You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, “Look.” —

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, the mover precedes that which is moved. But the irascible faculty is compared to the concupiscible, as mover to that which is moved: since it is given to animals, for the purposed of removing the obstacles that hinder the concupiscible faculty from enjoying its object, as stated above (Q[23], A[1], ad 1; [1224]FP, Q[81], A[2] ). Now “that which removes an obstacle, is a kind of mover” (Phys. viii, 4). Therefore the irascible passions precede the concupiscible passions. Objection 3: Further, joy and sadness are concupiscible passions. But joy and sadness succeed to the irascible passions: for the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 5) that”retaliation causes anger to cease, because it produces pleasure instead of the previous pain.” Therefore the concupiscible passions follow the irascible passions. On the contrary, The concupiscible passions regard the absolute good, while the irascible passions regard a restricted, viz. the difficult, good. Since, therefore, the absolute good precedes the restricted good, it seems that the concupiscible passions precede the irascible. I answer that, In the concupiscible passions there is more diversity than in the passions of the irascible faculty. For in the former we find something relating to movement—e.g. desire; and something belonging to repose, e.g. joy and sadness. But in the irascible passions there is nothing pertaining to repose, and only that which belongs to movement. The reason of this is that when we find rest in a thing, we no longer look upon it as something difficult or arduous; whereas such is the object of the irascible faculty. Now since rest is the end of movement, it is first in the order of intention, but last in the order of execution. If, therefore, we compare the passions of the irascible faculty with those concupiscible passions that denote rest in good, it is evident that in the order of execution, the irascible passions take precedence of such like passions of the concupiscible faculty: thus hope precedes joy, and hence causes it, according to the Apostle (Rom. 12:12): “Rejoicing in hope.” But the concupiscible passion which denotes rest in evil, viz. sadness, comes between two irascible passions: because it follows fear; since we become sad when we are confronted by the evil that we feared: while it precedes the movement of anger; since the movement of self-vindication, that results from sadness, is the movement of anger. And because it is looked upon as a good thing to pay back the evil done to us; when the angry man has achieved this he rejoices. Thus it is evident that every passion of the irascible faculty terminates in a concupiscible passion denoting rest, viz. either in joy or in sadness.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  9. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 10. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lix. 3) Our Lord, to waken the attention of the Jews, unfolds the meaning of what He has said; Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlv. 8) Lo, the very door which He had shut up, He openeth; He is the Door: let us enter, and let us enter with joy. All that ever came before Me are thieves and robbers. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lix. 3) He saith not this of the Prophets, as the heretics think, but of Theudas, and Judas, and other agitators. So he adds in praise of the sheep, The sheep heard them not; but he no where praises those who disobeyed the prophets, but condemns them severely. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlv. 8) Understand, All that ever came at variance with Me. The Prophets were not at variance2 with Him. They came with Him, who came with the Word of God, who spake the truth. He, the Word, the Truth, sent heralds before Him, but the hearts of those whom He sent were His own. They came with Him, inasmuch as He is always, though He assumed the flesh in time: In the beginning was the Word. His humble advent in the flesh was preceded by just men, who believed on Him as about to come, as we believe on Him come. The times are different, the faith is the same. Our faith knitteth together both those who believed that He was about to come, and those who believe that He has come. All that ever came at variance with Him were thieves and robbers; i. e. they came to steal and to kill; but the sheep did not hear them. They had not Christ’s voice; but were wanderers, dreamers, deceivers. Why He is the Door, He next explains, I am the Door; by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved. ALCUIN. As if to say, The sheep hear not them, but Me they hear; for I am the Door, and whoever entereth by Me not falsely but in sincerity, shall by perseverance be saved. THEOPHYLACT. The door admits the sheep into the pasture; And shall go in and out, and find pasture. What is this pasture, but the happiness to come, the rest to which our Lord brings us?

• From Cleanness (2020)

  A roar went up when the music started, the intro of Andrea’s most popular song, “Haide opa,” and another when a door in the wall opened and she stepped out onto the stage, followed by four other women. They wore skimpy two-piece outfits that exposed their midriffs, the four dancers almost identical, Andrea set off by what looked like a fur vest, plush and white, hanging open around her breasts, and by her hair, which wasn’t gathered back like the others’ but teased into a blond mane. It was a small stage, they could hardly move, they lifted their arms and spun, sometimes bending their knees deeply, everything exaggeratedly sexual. We had moved from our spots around the table and were standing in front of it, Z. in the middle, dancing so that we knocked into each other, our shoulders and hips, and then Z. put his arms around our shoulders and drew us tight, hugging us. When I looked over he was smiling, watching Andrea, smiling more when he turned his head and looked at me, and I smiled back, happy, pressing against him, reaching around him to squeeze N.’s shoulder, and he smiled at me too. The women onstage struck a pose as the song ended, and then the music shifted, became even more frenetic, a song I didn’t know, though there was another shout of recognition from the crowd. N. and Z. had always claimed they didn’t like chalga but they shouted too, a little hurrah, and started to dance with more enthusiasm, lifting their arms in the air. I stepped away to give Z. more room, but he hooked one of his arms around my shoulder and pulled me close again, making me dance alongside him, his flank hot against mine, his arm hot against my back, and I felt myself swept by a wave of happiness, my face stretched stupidly in a grin. I must look foolish, I thought, but there was so much pleasure in being a fool, why had I spent so much of my life guarding against it? I looked at Z. and N. and saw my feeling mirrored back at me, their faces shone in the dark, or that’s how I remember it, as though they were caught in the flare of a camera’s flash. But no one was taking pictures, it’s only my imagination that casts such light on them. On the stage, Andrea was pacing back and forth, like a cat in a cage.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  It’s through the drag performers’ explosive outfits and gestures, their overdrawn faces and voices, their tabooed trespass of gender, that this relief, through extravagant spectacle, is manifest. As much as they are useful, paid, and empowered as a vital service in a society where to be queer is still a sin, the drag queens are, for as long as the dead lie in the open, an othered performance. Their presumed, reliable fraudulence is what makes their presence, to the mourners, necessary. Because grief, at its worst, is unreal. And it calls for a surreal response. The queens—in this way—are unicorns. Unicorns stamping in a graveyard. — I remember the table. How flames started to lick at its edges. I remember my first Thanksgiving. I was at Junior’s house. Lan had made me a plate of fried eggrolls to bring over. I remember a house filled with over twenty people. People who slapped the table when they laughed. I remember food being piled on my plate: mashed potatoes, turkey, cornbread, chitlins, greens, sweet potato pie, and—eggrolls. Everyone praising Lan’s eggrolls as they dipped them in gravy. How I, too, dipped them in gravy. I remember Junior’s mother putting a black plastic circle on a wooden machine. How the circle spun and spun until music happened. How music was the sound of a woman wailing. How everyone closed their eyes and tilted their heads as if listening to a secret message. I remember thinking I’d heard this before, from my mother and grandmother. Yes. I heard this even inside the womb. It was the Vietnamese lullaby. How every lullaby began with wailing, as if pain could not exit the body any other way. I remember swaying while listening to my grandmother’s voice crooning through the machine. How Junior’s father slapped me on the shoulder. “What you know about Etta James?” I remember happiness. I remember my first year in an American school, the trip to the farm, how afterward, Mr. Zappadia gave each student a ditto of a black-and-white cow. “Color in what you saw today,” he said. I remember seeing how sad the cows were at the farm, their large heads lulled behind electric fences. And because I was six, I remember believing color was a kind of happiness—so I took the brightest shades in the crayon box and filled my sad cow with purple, orange, red, auburn, magenta, pewter, fuchsia, glittered grey, lime green. I remember Mr. Zappadia shouting, his beard trembling above me as a hairy hand grabbed my rainbow cow and crushed it in its fingers. “I said color in what you saw.” I remember doing it over. I remember leaving my cow blank and staring out the window. How the sky was blue and merciless. How I sat there, among my peers—unreal.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Darnell and his lover pretend not to know each other when they go to a party. Eric describes making love to his wife in the alley of their apartment building when they come home late at night, a furtive pleasure they indulge in before checking on the kids. Every year, Ivan and Rachel go away for a long weekend of consensual adultery with other swingers. “Instead of having secrets from each other, we have secrets from the world.” Jessica has rescued her husband from many lonesome stretches on the road by teasing him on the CB radio. Every morning, Leo tells his wife how lucky he is to be married to her, and he still means it after more than fifty years. For all these couples, playfulness is central to their relationship, and eroticism extends beyond the sexual act. Their lovemaking can be ceremonious or sudden, soulful or utilitarian, vanilla or transgressive, warm or hot. The point is that sex is pleasurable and inviting, not dutiful. They revere the erotic, yet they delight in its irreverence. They like sex, they especially like it with each other, and they take the time to nurture an erotic space. Like all couples, they go through periods when desire is dormant—when they are estranged from each other, or simply immersed in their own projects and in their own lives—but they don’t panic, terrified that something is fundamentally wrong with them. They know that erotic intensity waxes and wanes, that desire suffers periodic eclipses and intermittent disappearances. But given sufficient attention, they can bring the frisson back. For them, love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of their romance, it’s the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It’s a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There’s always a place they haven’t gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered. Modern relationships are cauldrons of contradictory longings: safety and excitement, grounding and transcendence, the comfort of love and the heat of passion. We want it all, and we want it with one person. Reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act that we achieve intermittently at best. It requires knowing your partner while recognizing his persistent mystery; creating security while remaining open to the unknown; cultivating intimacy that respects privacy. Separateness and togetherness alternate, or proceed in counterpoint.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I hung over him, letting him grow still, then pulled out and fell onto my back beside him. Mnogo hubavo beshe, he said, that was good, speaking Bulgarian for the first time, his face turned away. When I didn’t answer he turned toward me, then lifted himself onto his side. Hey, he said, his voice solicitous, hey. I put my hand over my face, which was wet with tears. I was embarrassed, I didn’t want him to see me, when he asked what was wrong I couldn’t answer. Stop it, he said, pulling my hand away, stop it, which made me cry harder somehow, and he kissed me, my forehead and cheeks, my lips, when I tried to pull away he grabbed my head with both his hands, holding me in place. Sladurche, he said, sweet boy, stop it now, don’t be like that, and then he licked my face, quickly, playfully, like a cat, everywhere he had kissed he licked, catching my hands in his when I tried to shield myself or push him away, until I was laughing and weeping both, I stopped struggling and let him lick my face. He laughed too, rolling on top of me, still licking me, and I realized that I had been wrong before; it did have an end, what I had felt, its end was here, he had brought me here. Finally he laid his head on my chest. Don’t be like that, he said again as I put my arms around him. Do you see? You don’t have to be like that, he said. You can be like this.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  But now N. interrupted his lecture, saying here he was, telling us about the town, it was hard work, and he was a professional, he shouldn’t work for free. I want money, he said, making us laugh, American money, does someone have a quarter, and someone did, it was fished out of a pocket and handed over. George Washington, he cried, a sudden change of tone, I love George Washington, he is my favorite person. We laughed again and he looked up, Why are you laughing, he asked, which made us laugh more. Look, he said, holding up the coin, it says here Liberty, it is the most beautiful thing, most beautiful word, it is for this I love George Washington. He fights for freedom, like us, Bulgarians fight for freedom too. For five hundred years we are slaves to the Turks, but now we are free. It is the most important thing, Liberty. Hear hear! someone said, an American, and we all raised our cups to N., though most of them were empty already. He seemed pleased by this, he gave a quick bow, at which our toast turned more raucous, Nazdrave, we cried, the Bulgarian toast, Nazdrave. He hopped down from his perch, motioning us to be quiet, We are not drunk Romanians, he said. Then he held the quarter up, looking at it anew, and with a tone of real wonder asked What do I do with this money, which set us laughing again. Keep it, D. said, from the back of our circle where the priest stood too close to her, it means someone in America loves you. Ah, said N., beaming at her, pleased beyond words, and he slid the coin into his breast pocket and cupped his hands over it. I keep it forever, he said.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  And then, in a broad, cartoonish Slavic accent, another classroom trick, I said Tonight I make exception, and drank deeply. Bravo, Z. said, that’s the way, and N. said again This is so epic, and then, this is the best night of my life, which made all three of us laugh. I hadn’t been paying attention to where Z. was leading us, and I was surprised when we arrived at the Doctor’s Garden, a little tree-filled park just west of the university. I had been there often, I loved it during the day, and at night it filled like all the parks with young people drinking. Let’s stop for a minute, Z. said, pulling out his phone and making the little screen light up, we still had some time to kill before we needed to be at the club. Z. turned off the path almost as soon as we entered the park, taking us into a section of trees and grass that was filled with dozens of fragments of marble, broken pillars and bits of cornices. This part of the garden was dark, and the stones glowed faintly, reflecting the light from the paths and playgrounds. I had looked at these fragments before, in the daytime, reading the plaques laid in the ground with information about their provenance, the various archaeological digs where they were found, translations of their inscriptions. Z. chose a pillar the right height and sat the carton on top of it, making me suck my breath between my teeth. What, he asked, and I said something about its antiquity, how it was thousands of years old and he was using it as his table. N. laughed. All this time in Bulgaria, he said, and you’re still such an American. We have stuff like this everywhere, he said, if we couldn’t touch it we couldn’t live. And besides, Z. said, don’t you think it’s better out here than in a museum, I think it likes it, and he ran his hand down the length of the stone, a strangely sensual gesture, I think it likes us to touch it. Go ahead, he said, you touch it too, and when I hesitated, he took my arm just above the wrist and pulled it to the stone. I laughed, surrendering, and stroked it as he had done, the stone warmer than the air, it must have soaked in the late sun, and pocked, not smooth at all, or smooth only where letters had been chiseled into it, the slanted edges of the cut still perfectly polished.

• From Post Office (1971)

  Take off those high heels, go into the kitchen and don’t make a sound.” “JUST A MOMENT!” I answered the knocker. I lit a cigarette to kill my breath, then went to the door and opened it a notch. It was the nurse. The same one. She knew me. “Now what’s your trouble?” she asked. I blew out a little roll of smoke. “Upset stomach.” “Are you sure?” “It’s my stomach.” “Will you sign this form to show that I called here and that you were at home?” “Surely.” The nurse slipped the form in sideways. I signed it. Slipped it back out. “Will you be in to work tomorrow?” “I have no way of knowing. If I’m well, I’ll come in. If not, I’ll stay out.” She gave me a dirty look and walked off. I knew she had smelled whiskey on my breath. Proof enough? Probably not, too many technicalities, or maybe she was laughing as she got into her car with her little black bag. “All right,” I said, “get on your shoes and come on out.” “Who was it?” “A post office nurse.” “Is she gone?” “Yeh.” “Do they do that all the time?” “They haven’t missed yet. Now let’s each have a good tall drink to celebrate!” I walked into the kitchen and poured two good ones. I came out and handed Betty her drink. “Salud!” I said. We raised our glasses high, clicked them. Then the alarm clock went off and it was a loud one. I jerked as if I had been shot in the back. Betty leaped a foot into the air, straight up. I ran over to the clock and shut off the alarm. “Jesus,” she said, “I almost shit myself!” We both started laughing. Then we sat down. Had the good drink. “I had a boyfriend who worked for the county,” she said. “They used to send out an inspector, a guy, but not everytime, maybe one time in five. So this night I am drinking with Harry—that was his name: Harry. This night I am drinking with Harry and there’s a knock on the door. Harry’s sitting on the couch with all his clothes on. ‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ he says, and he leaps into bed with all his clothes on and pulls the covers up. I put the bottles and glasses under the bed and open the door. This guy comes in and sits on the couch. Harry even has his shoes and stockings on but he is completely under the covers. The guy says, ‘How you feeling, Harry?’ And Harry says, ‘Not so good. She’s over to take care of me.’ He points at me. I was sitting there drunk. ‘Well, I hope you get well, Harry,’ the guy says, and then he leaves. I’m sure he saw those bottles and glasses under the bed, and I’m sure he knew that Harry’s feet weren’t that big.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  And then he repeated the word I didn’t know but that I thought meant steady and suddenly my mouth was filled with warmth, bright and bitter, his urine, which I took as I had taken everything else, it was a kind of pride in me to take it. Kuchko , he said as I drank, speaking softly and soothingly, addressing me again, mnogo si dobra , you’re very good, and he said this a second time and a third before he was done. He stepped back, withdrawing from my mouth, and told me to lay myself out on the gray carpet face down, with my arms stretched over my head. It was a difficult position, the carpet was rough and there was no good place for my cock, which was still hard, having never softened, or softened only briefly, though we had been together I thought for a long time. He grunted as he knelt beside me, settling his large frame, and then he placed his hands on my back, not stroking or kneading but appraising. Mnogo si debel , he said again, you’re very fat, pinching my flesh between his fingers, but I like you, he said, haresvash mi , you’re pleasing to me, and I thanked him, I said radvam se , I’m glad of that, though a more literal translation would be something like I rejoice or take joy in it, which was closer to what I felt. His hands moved lower then, to my ass and the opening there, which he touched, still tenderly, though I flinched as he tested it, he said How is your hole and inched the tip of one dry finger inside. Kuchko , he said again, and again I like you, still speaking tenderly to me, so that I felt I had passed some test, that I had proven myself and entered within the scope of his affection, or if not his affection at least his regard. Then he stretched out beside me, not quite touching me, and brought his face close to mine as his hand moved lower still, between my legs, which I spread slightly before lifting up my hips to let his hand snake between my legs and touch my cock for the first time. And you like me too, he said, feeling how hard I was; he gripped me tightly before letting me go. Very much, I said, I like you very much, and it was true, I was excited by him in a new way, or almost new; I had never been with anyone so skilled or so patient. His hand was on my balls now, which he drew together and down, making a kind of ring with his thumb and forefinger, drawing them tighter before folding the rest of his hand around them.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  There were hundreds of people in the square, pressed tight near the wooden barricades that held them back from the fire but more spread out near the edges, where we were; there was space here for people to toast one another, with wine in plastic cups or little glass bottles like those R. had bought for us, prosecco with a twist-off cap. After we drank I leaned toward him and cupped his face in my palm and we kissed. I moved my mouth in a way he liked, kissing first his upper lip and then his lower before I drew away, hanging my arm around his shoulder. And then, as the statue burned—it was huge, it would take a long time to burn—there was another sound, a salute of drums and a burst of guitars, and then the far corner of the square lit up with floodlights, and there was a new shout from the crowd as it shifted toward the platform where the band had begun to play, four skinny boys bent over their instruments. There was a keyboard as well as the guitars and drums, it was an American sound, I thought, which contrasted with the stone buildings around us, with the pagan fire. R. and I didn’t move as the crowd thinned further; we wouldn’t stay, it was cold and the band wasn’t very good, we would watch the fire a little longer and then go back to the hotel. R. pulled away from me suddenly and reached into his coat pocket, taking from it the packet of raisins he had bought earlier with the wine. I almost forgot, he said, it’s almost too late. He handed me his bottle and took off one of his mittens so he could open the packet. Give me your hand, he said, so I put the bottles on the ground and held it out to him, taking my glove off as he asked, and he counted out twelve raisins, placing them in my palm in a single line from my wrist to the tip of my third finger, then counting another twelve for himself. It was the Portuguese tradition, he had told me, a raisin for each month of the year that had passed, a wish for each month of the year to come. He looked at me and smiled, Skups, he said, feliz ano , and we kissed again.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Then she laughed again, pointing, and I saw that ahead of us a group of women were dancing on the sidewalk, their hair wet, their sundresses clinging to their bodies, and several stories above them an elderly man, shirtless and bald, his skin hanging loose around his frame, held a garden hose, pointing it up and half blocking the end with his thumb so that water fell down like rain. It was his gift to us, a chance to cool down, though most of the marchers avoided it, leaving it to the young women, who would be cold soon enough; the heat was fading, even on warm days the nights could be cool. It was an instant allegory, youth and age, Hephaestus and the Graces. And then my mind shuffled to the side a step and I thought of the water cannons in Taksim Square, of the luck that had held here so far. M. turned her head as we passed them, then looked back at me, smiling. My parents don’t like that I come, she said, they don’t like the government but they’re afraid of violence, they’re afraid I’ll get in trouble with the police. But it’s not like that at all, she said, people aren’t angry, there’s so much joy here, she said, they don’t understand that, have you ever seen so much joy? It makes me wish I weren’t leaving, she went on, my whole life I’ve been dying to get out of here and now I feel like I want to stay. This made me remember the taxi driver and what he had said about the Changes, how he had wasted his life for an idealism that had curdled, but I didn’t say this, I put my arm around her and squeezed her shoulder, another breach of decorum. I mean, look at that, she said after I dropped my arm, and she pointed at a sign being carried by a man just in front of us. The crowd had bunched and slowed as people climbed the stairs that led from the boulevard up to the plaza at NDK. I almost never came to NDK this way, I always circled around to the other side.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Then he laughed and pointed ahead, at a bright yellow bag with the letters BILLA on it, its red handles tied off in a bow. It was the store we went to all the time in Mladost, our neighborhood store. I knew it was a big chain, that you could find them everywhere in Europe, and still it felt like a bit of good fortune to stumble across it here. R. pulled out his guidebook then, with its useless maps, he was afraid we would lose the light before we saw San Marco. He started walking more quickly while I hung back, protesting; it didn’t matter, everything was beautiful, everything was something we hadn’t seen before and wouldn’t see again. But he insisted, increasingly frustrated as the map refused to align with the streets we walked; he was better with maps than I was but not by much. He got annoyed with me for walking too slowly and stopping too often, but I wanted to take photos of everything, the buildings, the canals, the laundry hung out in the damp air to dry, the mask shop with its window of carnival grotesques, backlit through the metal grill that had been pulled down. R. was growing frantic in a way I didn’t understand. We would lose the light, he kept saying, as though he were an artist imagining a scene, I want to see it before we lose the light. So I put away my camera and walked more quickly, I kept my eyes on R. to avoid being distracted by anything else. And he did find it, finally, by luck mostly, I think, suddenly we turned and it opened out before us, after the cramped alleys the expanse of the square, beyond it the horizon of water. R. turned to me, smiling, and surely it wasn’t at that moment that the bells began to ring, it’s a trick of memory to stage it that way, but it is how I remember it, the birds flying up, everyone turning to the Campanile, as we did, its top still bright as it caught the last of the sun.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I remembered this later, waiting for the bus that would take us to town. We were the only people in the little shelter at the stop, huddling together against the wind, which was sharper than I had expected; it wasn’t very cold but it was cold enough for our coats, for the scarves we had draped around each other before heading out. Then R. stepped up onto the bench, he grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him. Now I’m the taller one, he said, and bent down to kiss me, not a chaste kiss, he gripped my hair and tilted my head farther back to probe my mouth with his tongue. I tried to pull away, laughing: it was a busy road, we were in full view of the passing cars. But he held me tight, kissing me with urgency, until I realized that exposure was the point, that he wanted to show off, here where nobody knew him, where he could be anonymous and free, could live out an ideal of candor. He leaned into me, pressing his pelvis into my stomach so I felt his cock hard between us; it turned him on to show off like this, I had had no idea. I gripped him, using my body to shield us, I gripped him hard with both my hands through his jeans. I started to undo his belt, wanting to meet him in his daring, to show him I was game; and he moaned into my mouth before he pulled back and pushed my hand away. Porta-te bem, he said, slapping my face lightly and laughing, behave.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  We had to walk sideways and single file to make it through the crowd, though people tried to make room for us, smiling and moving out of our way as best they could. We must have been a familiar sight, two friends helping a third, and again I had the feeling of belonging with them, which was warm and present and drowned out my premonition of shame. We climbed the stairs and pushed out into the night, nodding at the two bouncers who didn’t acknowledge us, and I sucked in great breaths as if I had been starving for air. Z. stumbled again, leaning hard against me, and we sat on the stairs to wait for the cab N. had called. Z. bent forward, his elbows propped on his knees, and moaned, and N. and I laughed at him. Mnogo si slab, be , I said, you’re very weak, I expected better, and I gripped his shoulder to pull him to me. But then he slipped or lost his balance and fell across my lap, and a single fluent stream of vomit struck the pavement beside my shoes. He stayed in that position, draped across my lap, and I bent over him, as if to shield him from something, and rubbed his back, the fabric of his shirt damp with sweat. Ne se chuvstvam dobre , he said, pushing himself upright, I don’t feel well, and N. told him not to worry, they were going home, he would sleep it off. They would go to Z.’s apartment, which was somewhere nearby, the studio his family kept and that Z. had claimed as his own, a place to take girls and have small gatherings, it was only big enough for five or six people, he had told me. He was still slumped against me, I could feel his heat against my side. When the cab came we stood, N. and I pulling Z. up and leading him to the car. Will you be okay, I asked as Z. pulled his legs in, half lying across N.’s lap. But you’re coming, N. said, don’t you want to come with us, we can hang out at Z.’s place, and Z. echoed him, saying Yes, come, Gospodine , his voice slurred with drink. I stood with my hand on the car, hesitating, wanting to join them and imagining what might still happen, the possibilities of privacy with Z., I was tempted to try them. But I stepped back instead. No, I said, I have to go home, it’s too late already. But thank you for tonight, I said, I had so much fun, thank you. It was a great night, Z. said, letting his head fall as I swung the door shut. I didn’t have to wait long for another taxi to appear, one pulled up almost right away, letting a couple out in front of the club.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He seemed pleased by this, he gave a quick bow, at which our toast turned more raucous, Nazdrave , we cried, the Bulgarian toast , Nazdrave . He hopped down from his perch, motioning us to be quiet, We are not drunk Romanians, he said. Then he held the quarter up, looking at it anew, and with a tone of real wonder asked What do I do with this money, which set us laughing again. Keep it, D. said, from the back of our circle where the priest stood too close to her, it means someone in America loves you. Ah, said N., beaming at her, pleased beyond words, and he slid the coin into his breast pocket and cupped his hands over it. I keep it forever, he said. Then the priest said something I didn’t catch, pointing with his bottle, and N. said Yes! The beach! I take you there, and we followed him across the square. I was eager to be festive with these people, to distract myself from the grief I had felt since receiving R.’s message, my own grief and grief at the thought of him alone in his room in Lisbon—though I didn’t know where he was, of course, he had sent his message hours before and might already have recovered from his spasm of regret, who could know. I hung back a bit, as we reached the other side of the square, to look at the structure we were passing through, something like a covered patio between two buildings, while the others were descending the wooden staircase to the sea. There was a set of wooden counters, what looked like a sizeable bar, but all of it was abandoned now, strewn with trash and empty bottles. It must come alive in the season, I thought, though there was a kind of finality to its disuse, it was difficult to imagine that in a few weeks it would be transformed, packed with young people. I felt uneasy, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t alone; a man, who must have been watching us as we passed, was leaning against the wall. He took a long drag from a cigarette, the tip flaring red in the dark, and met my eyes briefly before lowering his gaze. I almost thought he was there to cruise, that maybe this was a place men used, but he had an air of belonging, leaning against the wall, and I decided he must be something like a guard, keeping an eye on the place until it came to life again for the summer.